Hamish
by Moonwort Harvestar
Summary: John spends the night at the Holmes manor. AU Kid!Lock, one-shot. Edited!


**A/N: ****Obviously, Sherlock belongs to the BBC, not me.**

* * *

It was Mycroft who answered the door, as usual.

"Hello John. Do come in." He beamed at the little boy on the doorstep before shouting back into the house, "Sherlock! Stop fooling around with dangerous chemicals and come greet your guest!"

Mycroft turned back to John and said, "I apologize in advance for my brother's manners, or rather, lack thereof."

John didn't answer. He was too busy craning his neck and staring, open-mouthed, at everything there was to stare at in the foyer of the Holmes' manor. It was bigger and grander than anything he had ever seen in his eleven short years. He had known that Sherlock's family was rich of course, but he'd never known exactly how rich. Mycroft just shook his head and smiled.

"Go ahead upstairs. He's probably in his room, the third door on your left."

John began to climb the spiral staircase carefully, and without touching the railing for fear of leaving unwanted finger prints. He turned, mouth open, about to ask Mycroft something, anything, but Mycroft had disappeared. John sighed and took a deep breath as he walked down the mile-long hallway to Sherlock's bedroom door. He raised his fist tentatively to knock on it, but before he could, the door swung open from the inside.

"John! I'm glad you're here, come and have a look at this."

Even though he was a year younger than John, Sherlock was almost a full head taller than him, and his eyes glowed with curiosity and discovery as he pulled his friend into his darkened bedroom-slash-laboratory. The only light in the room came from a table in the very center where there were various liquids glowing fluorescent colors in bulbous glass beakers, bubbling, and hissing quietly.

"It's a color-coded diagram of the human body by tissue type," he exclaimed. "I've been working on it all morning!"

"It's, uh… it's very nice Sherlock, but what's it for?" John asked.

"What's it for? John, it's for science! Haven't you ever wanted to know something just for the sake of knowing?"

"Well," he hesitated, "not just for the sake of it, but I suppose it's useful stuff to know. You could be a scientist or a doctor or something."

Sherlock waved that off.

"No, no, I don't want to be a doctor. That's far too boring," he scoffed. "I want adventure. I want excitement!"

"Hmph, well I want to be a doctor," said John indignantly. "I think saving people's lives is exciting."

"Well, that's a perfectly respectable position John. It'll suit you, I think."

John smiled.

"But I can do far better," Sherlock continued. "Something really radical that no one's ever done before."

That didn't make John quite so happy.

"Why don't we play pirates?" he asked, by way of changing the subject.

Sherlock's face lit up. "Perfect! This compound will take at least another few hours to fully react anyway. Let's go out to the garden, come on!"

If John had thought the house was impressive, he wasn't prepared for the garden. The beds overflowed with wild flowers, groomed just enough to maintain control, while still giving the outward appearance of being natural. There was a tree with a swing that was painted white, and here and there butterflies darted from flower to flower.

"Butterflies," thought John. "They've even got butterflies. Bloody Holmes's, how do they do it?"

"Come on John!" Sherlock called from halfway across the lawn. He leapt onto the swing, spinning around and clutching the rope to keep from falling.

"Avast ye yellow-bellied land-lubber! What be ye doin' down there on the shore when there's adventure afoot?"

John laughed and shook his head. "Methinks there be trouble a-brewin' on the seven seas," he replied, giving in to the game. "Might it be wise to stay a-port until the storm passes?"

"Why you chicken-livered cod!" Sherlock shouted, but all the while grinning broadly at his friend. "Why would we want to go to sea if there were no trouble? Trouble is me middle name!"

"Aye cap'n, that it is!"

They spent hours up the Holmes' oak tree, leaping from branch to branch, shouting orders they didn't really understand, like, "Hard a-starboard!" and, "Tie that off at the mizzen mast ye scurvy dog!"

They didn't even notice when the light began to fade from the sky, until Mycroft came to the back door and shouted, "For god's sake Sherlock, get out of that tree and come in for supper!"

After supper, it was all the teenager could do to get the two boys into bed.

"Fine! Stay up all night, see if I care!" Mycroft finally said, throwing his hands up in exasperation, "but don't blame me when you get into trouble with Mummy."

As soon as he left, shutting the door with a humph, Sherlock and John broke into a fit of giggles.

"Mummy won't care," Sherlock confided. "She's never around anyway. Mycroft likes to pretend that he has some sort of authority over me, but we both know he doesn't."

"Sounds a lot like Harry," John agreed. "Why do they think just because they're older they know better?"

"Well they don't!" said Sherlock emphatically. "Mycroft thinks he's so much smarter and that he knows all kinds of things about me. Well he doesn't know that I know about his new boyfriend, the one he's keeping from mummy."

That set them off again into gales of laughter, and they went on talking and laughing like that long into the night. John didn't even notice when his eyelids began to droop and he let out a tiny yawn, but of course Sherlock did.

"You're tired John! How late is it?" he wondered, reaching anxiously for his watch.

"It's not that late," answered John, but he yawned again as he spoke. "Okay, maybe it is, a little."

"I'll turn off the light," Sherlock offered.

"Wait!"

Sherlock turned around. He saw John sitting cross-legged on the bed. In an instant Sherlock saw him touch his knee, bite his lip, glance backward toward the headboard and then back up to Sherlock's finger, still resting on the light switch.

"Needs something to hold onto. Embarrassed, but the fear outweighs the embarrassment." Sherlock thought.

"You're afraid of the dark," he concluded.

"What?" John asked, flustered. "No!"

"And," Sherlock cocked his head, "You feel like you're too old for that sort of thing, so you left your teddy bear, or something equivalent, at home. You thought you could cope without it, but now you're reconsidering."

John had turned his back to Sherlock, and when Sherlock walked around the bed to look him in the face, he saw that his friend was as red as a beet and staring pointedly at the quilt.

"It's nothing to be ashamed of John."

"I'm not ashamed!" John whirled on him.

"The color of your cheeks suggests otherwise."

"Sherlock!"

"I fail to see what you're so upset about John," Sherlock shrugged.

"What, you can't just deduce what the problem is?" asked John with biting sarcasm.

Sherlock sighed. "Social cues are not the same as deductions John."

Finally, John began, searching for the right words, "It's just that you, and your house, and your bloody experiments… sometimes it just makes me feel small. I don't need my stupid…"

He trailed off, but now Sherlock knew what he meant.

"You felt that your phobia somehow belittled you as a person. "John, you ought to know that I would never think any less of you for something like this. You're not still mad at me are you?"

After a long pause, the older boy finally responded, "He's an otter, actually."

"What?"

"He's not a bear, he's an otter."

Sherlock broke into a broad grin. "So I was right!"

"Shut up," John countered.

"Okay," Sherlock gave in, "Except, I was going to offer you Hamish..."

"Who?"

"Hamish," he replied, and produced a small, fluffy, very faded plush hedgehog from under the pillows. That surprised John, as he had figured that if Sherlock wasn't already above keeping stuffed animals, his parents could at least spring for some nicer ones than this.

"He's mine. I've had him always, but you can use him tonight if you want."

John finally smiled. "Thank you, Sherlock. We can share him."

The two of them crawled under the sheets, the well-loved old hedgehog between them. John could feel Sherlock's breath on the top of his head, slowing as he began to fall asleep, and his own breath caught in his throat. He rested his head against Sherlock's chest and the sound of the steady heartbeat made his own pulse quicken.

"You're still nervous," came Sherlock's voice quietly out of the darkness. "Don't be. There's nothing to be afraid of. I won't let the darkness get you."

John sighed softly. He hugged Hamish the hedgehog tightly and nuzzled gently against Sherlock as together, they fell asleep.


End file.
